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Defense Secretary Robert Gates Confirms Blackwater in Pakistan
In an interview with the Pakistani TV station Express TV, Defense Secretary Robert Gates confirmed that the private security firms Blackwater and DynCorp are operating inside Pakistan. "They're operating as individual companies here in Pakistan," Gates said, according to a DoD transcript of the interview. "There are rules concerning the contracting companies. If they're contracting with us or with the State Department here in Pakistan, then there are very clear rules set forth by the State Department and by ourselves."
This appears to be a contradiction of previous statements made by the Defense Department, by Blackwater, by the Pakistani government and by the US embassy in Islamabad, all of whom claimed Blackwater was not in the country. In September, the US Ambassador to Pakistan, Anne Patterson, denied Blackwater's presence in the country, stating bluntly, "Blackwater is not operating in Pakistan." In December in The Nation magazine, I reported on Blackwater's work for JSOC in Pakistan and on a subcontract with a private Pakistani security company. The Pentagon did not issue any clear public denials, and instead tried to pass the buck to the State Department, which in turn passed it to the US embassy, which in turn issued an unsigned statement saying the story was false.
Pakistan's Interior Minister Rehman Malik has said on numerous occasions that he would resign if it is proven that Blackwater is operating inside Pakistan.
Asked what the US response would be if the Pakistani parliament passed a law banning private security companies, Gates said, "If it's Pakistani law, we will absolutely comply."
Asked about Seymour Hersh's recent report in The New Yorker that US special forces were inside Pakistan helping to secure the country's nuclear weapons, Gates said, "Well, you know, we sometimes have journalistic reports in the United States that aren't terribly accurate either. You can't respond to all of them. I think that one was not true."
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7 Comments so far
Show AllPemanent warfare. Get used to it.
Or sick of it.
Plausible deniability, anyone?
War is Peace. Therefore we have won, so send the mercenaries home.
If Blackwater works for DoD, and DoD works for the military, and the CIC is elected by the corporations, it is safe to assume Pakistan will be an acquisition in the near future?
Invasion, Escalation and (Seeking) Wider War! Just(ly) more of Obamapocalypse, NOW and his fellow jackasses DEMoliating themselves for their BushCo.-dependent corporate masters!
Without Scahill's work we would know very little about the privatized army within an army, CIA within the CIA and government within the government. From his linked earlier report:
While JSOC has long played a central role in US counterterrorism and covert operations, military and civilian officials who worked at the Defense and State Departments during the Bush administration described in interviews with The Nation an extremely cozy relationship that developed between the executive branch (primarily through Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld) and JSOC. During the Bush era, Special Forces turned into a virtual stand-alone operation that acted outside the military chain of command and in direct coordination with the White House.
and,
As part of their strategy, Rumsfeld and Cheney also created the Strategic Support Branch (SSB), which pulled intelligence resources from the Defense Intelligence Agency and the CIA for use in sensitive JSOC operations. The SSB was created using "reprogrammed" funds "without explicit congressional authority or appropriation," according to the Washington Post. The SSB operated outside the military chain of command and circumvented the CIA's authority on clandestine operations. Rumsfeld created it as part of his war to end "near total dependence on CIA." Under US law, the Defense Department is required to report all deployment orders to Congress. But guidelines issued in January 2005 by former Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Stephen Cambone stated that Special Operations forces may "conduct clandestine HUMINT operations...before publication" of a deployment order. This effectively gave Rumsfeld unilateral control over clandestine operations.
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Now, thanks to the Supreme Court, they can always stick a few extra million into a contract to buy themselves a cheap senator if they are ever worried about oversight or a president that would limit their power or cut their funding.
I also think the attacks in Pakistan - some attributed to the Taliban although we'll never know - have been very harmful. The mentality mentioned in the link to taking out 35 people to get one has long term negative consequences for the cause of world peace, but just provides more business to Xe, the contractor formally known as Blackwater. Permanent, expanding and ever more expensive, invasive and even totalitarian government is just fine with the contractor nation. The raison d'etre has been lost in a cloud of profit and the corruption that absolute power breeds.